


Brothers Shouldn't

by Charlie Snow (Algedonic)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Sibling Incest, Underage Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 03:06:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Algedonic/pseuds/Charlie%20Snow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They love each other in dark motel rooms and truck stop bathrooms; love each other with a look or with a breath or with quiet fingers finding bare skin in a back seat.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brothers Shouldn't

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely and talented [Ella Storm](http://ellastorm.tumblr.com/) has been kind enough to translate, and this fic is [now available in German.](http://www.fanfiktion.de/s/535a48a60002995815ff0535/1/Brothers-Shouldn-039-t)

A hotel room, Duluth Minnesota 2:47am November 3rd 1997 and two brothers curl together under too-thin too-rough motel blankets like bulletproof vests as an engine idles and dies outside.

The first thing that happens is a heavy thud, mumbled curse, the second a scraping, the click of a lock. The third is the smell of whiskey.

The door opens with a blast of cold and they hunt monsters but this is what they fear, crack of a shin against wood and the sound of a lamp shattering, then a growl and the lights come on.

One brother doesn’t move, breath caught in his throat like a fly in a spider’s web and the other is on his feet before the yelling starts.

Crack as a backhand meets a jaw, one brother stumbles and the other winces, eyes dry with rage boiling under his skin, watches helpless as a well-aimed kick sends his brother to his hands and knees, sharp intake of breath barely audible over the heavy thump, the sound of a monster wearing a father’s face growling _clean it up_ as it weaves it’s way to the bathroom.

There’s blood. Blood welling on a split lip and running down a forearm from where a shard of ceramic has lodged itself in a palm. They speak their own language, a language of looks and nods and silent touches and one brother cleans up the mess while the other presses paper towels to a wound to try to staunch the bleeding.

Fourteen years old and he leaned to sew up flesh on citrus but he’s had a lot of practice since then, five quick stitches and his brother doesn’t make a sound as he works, curved needle and strong thread and antiseptic cream and gauze. When he’s done he kisses every finger and his brother tilts his chin up and kisses lips.

Brothers shouldn’t, but one is bleeding and the other feels it and should’s and shouldn’t’s never meant as much as they were supposed to anyway.

 

___

 

They love each other in dark motel rooms and truck stop bathrooms; love each other with a look or with a breath or with quiet fingers finding bare skin in a back seat. They love each other like the moon loves the sun, like the forest loves the rain, desperate and dependent and wholly consumed, love each other with steady hands on gun triggers and knife hilts, lives saved so many times the debts stopped being debts and became their souls instead, grown together like scar tissue on the jagged edges of a long forgotten wound, like saplings planted too close together, tangling and accommodating and fusing, twins conjoined at the chest and skull and soul, separation not recommended, survival unlikely.

They’re both the parasitic twin in this thing they’ve got, living inside each other and absorbing nutrients through their skin, through umbilical cords anchored between their hearts and the blood pumps both ways, Sam is Dean and Dean is Sam and they’re separate but not, close as they can get not close enough when they both want to carve out a home for themselves inside the other, crawl inside and live there in the tight-hot-blood-slick dark until everything ends but this cause this is immortal, a fact, a fixed point at the center of everything that is or has been or will ever be, older than the first speck of dust in the universe and born and reborn faster than cells can divide and make new cells and it’ll never end, not even when time itself falters to a stop and blinks out.

 

___

 

Another hotel room, Chattanooga Tennessee 11:49pm May 7th 1999 and two brothers rock together on a mattress with springs threatening to break through like bony treetops and clouds in winter. Sweat-slick and sticky one brother gives while the other takes and which is which is hard to tell, even harder for them when beginnings and endings and you’s and me’s slip away and leave only skin and breath and this. One brother wraps pale legs around the other and claws bloody marks into hot skin and the other leaves bruises under his fingers and his lips in a desperate bid for closer, more, come on, _everything_ and they come undone together, leaving pieces of themselves lodged beneath each other’s skin like shrapnel as they heal, names like prayers and promises on each other’s lips. 

Twenty years old and he’s got a lot of scars but the only ones he thinks about are the ones his baby brother carves into him with his bare hands on nights when they’re both in too many pieces to know better. 

Brothers shouldn’t but one breathes in as the other breathes out, one shivers as the other sighs and brothers doesn’t even begin to cover it, shouldn’t’s just a word.

 

___

 

They love each other in roadside diners and across pool tables under the neon light of beer signs, on back roads and dirt roads and the sides of roads in every state that borders another. They love each other with the volatility of Tornado Alley in the spring; love each other with fists and teeth, with the bloom of blood under skin and lips and fingertips. 

They love so hard it aches, claws and screams its way out of one and paints the flesh of the other _I could have lost you_ burgundy and _you don’t own me_ violet and _yes I fucking do_ blue so dark it’s almost black. They love like plate tectonics, inevitable drift toward each other until the crash like an earthquake, chain-reaction erupting volcanoes, one or both buckling under the force of the other, creating mountain ranges to make room. They love like the last wish of a dying man, like gallows humor and they don’t even bother to ask the usual questions like _why_ and _what’s it all mean_ because the answer is _this_ , the answer is _everything_ , the answer is _because._

They’ve got a pet monster they keep in the dark and they name is _Us_ ; obsessive, possessive, half-crazed biting snapping snarling at anything that gets too close. _Us_ ’s got a temper on him, been known to tear a man to shreds and leave him bloody and they’ve both been bitten, yeah, but they’ve had it coming every time. _Us_ ’s got a temper, but _Us_ purrs when you rub him the right way, curls up hot and sleepy in your arms and swears to keep you warm and safe while you rest, follows you through mud and blood and hell and covers your blind spots, licks your wounds if he can’t get between you and hurt in time to take it for you. _Us_ can be a vicious little demon when provoked, but he’s loyal and he’s fearless and when the worst thing you can say about a monster is that it loves too much, maybe monster stops being the right word.

 

___

 

Two motel rooms this time, Palo Alto California/Lafayette Louisiana 12/2:20am August 13th 2001 and two brothers are falling apart alone. One is crying and the other is so drunk he can’t see but both feel like someone sliced them open with a hot knife and hollowed out their chests. One regrets going and the other regrets staying and when the mirror shatters and the skin tears one brother hisses at the sting and sight of blood and stumbles drunkenly into the sink while the other cries harder, phantom ache in his right hand. 

It’s stubbornness that keeps them from picking up the phone, sheer bull-headed stubbornness because they both feel the pull like gravity, like orbiting a black hole. It goes against everything they hold true about the world and themselves and one brother cries himself to sleep with his thumb on the call button while the other passes out on the bathroom floor with dark dry blood caking his knuckles. 

They sprawl out states apart and slide calloused hands into their pants and think about each other. One brother presses his free hand to his throat, the other presses fingers to his lips but the angle’s wrong, the temperature’s wrong and this is like seeing a black and white encyclopedia photo of the Grand Canyon versus putting one foot in front of the other and throwing yourself over the edge with a paraglider strapped to your back, updrafts and gentle drift keeping you floating for hours.

Eighteen years old and he’s been hurt before but never like this, self-inflicted evisceration, trying desperately to keep his insides from slipping bloody through his fingers. He knows a lot of words but none of them even come close to this, a near-fatal poison concocted of guilt and longing and regret and grief and craving chewing through his veins. 

Brothers shouldn’t but they pretend it’s the other as rough hands skim hot flesh, little pinpricks of pleasure punching holes in the loneliness, not enough to erase it but enough to ease it for one impossible moment, enough to crack through the burn of tears and liquor and let them feel something other than broken, and should’s and shouldn’t’s don’t mean a goddamn thing next to this.

 

___

 

They love each other silently over county lines and state lines, empty snow-dusted fields and barren skies and echoing canyons. They love each other with each skipped beat of their hearts at the glimpse of a sasquatch with shaggy brown hair in a crowd or ’67 Impala parked on the side of the road, with the moment of breathless hope between the first ring of a telephone and first glance at the caller ID. Dean does is with every _two queens_ and Sam with the pint of Jack unopened in the freezer. They love each other with every _just in case_ , every unspoken _I should’ve_ and _I shouldn’t’ve_ and _I miss you_ and _I’m sorry_ that brands itself on their tongues and burns their throats and shreds their lungs like shards of glass. They move through life like the ghosts that they hunt, _unfinished business_ , linger on the edges of a world that’s no longer theirs. 

The monster named _Us_ howls and pines in the dark, doesn’t snarl or growl, not anymore, just glances up with dull dead eyes every time a column of light sweeps across the floor from an accidentally opened door, rolls over, curls in on himself like a kick to the ribs, waits. Waits until they leave or come back or someone says his name or his heart finally stutters and stops, waits and waits and waits and doesn’t allow himself hope cause this hurts like being flayed alive and dipped in acid as it is. He waits and he whimpers his anguish to the empty silent dark and then he waits some more.

 

___

 

One more motel room, Laramie Wyoming 10:16pm December 24th 2005 and two brothers sit on separate beds, stiff, anticipatory, hearing every breath the other takes and feeling every shift of muscle. They’re silent like a line break, like the sound between songs, the moment between a fist to the solar plexus and gasping for breath.

One brother moves and so does the other and no one knows which does it first, either neither doesn’t matter as two brothers push-pull give-take scratch-bite-claw-kiss their way home, finding porch lights on and front doors unlocked, cold beer and hot dinner set for two on the table when they get there. One brother begs and the other sobs, one makes promises with his fingers and the other keeps them with his mouth.

They love each other with their bodies, with every lost breath and press of lips, every bead of sweat and scrape of teeth. They love each other with one-syllable words too big for the sum of their letters and sounds that aren’t words at all. They love each other like oxygen, love each other with their eyes open, with hands that are brutal and tender, hands that hurt and heal.

Twenty-two and it scares him what he would do, twenty-six to never lose this, sell his soul or break the world, challenge the devil to a fistfight or rip every single angel out of heaven just to keep this.

Brothers shouldn’t but it doesn’t matter cause one brother cries out and the other just cries and the space between them blurs and flickers, goes up in flames like a spirit laid to rest and they come apart, come together, and shouldn’t’s just a word.


End file.
